I haven't yet continued with my autobiographical posts, the last being my Autobiography, Part 2 back in April. The next installment will cover a period which starts in February 1974 and ends in November 1977. It was a troubling time for me, most of it being my high school years.

As I mentioned in my article, The Power of Positive Thinking, "Sometimes I purposely write about negative thoughts, memories, emotions and experiences so that I can bring them out into the light and examine them closely. By doing so, I can apply age and wisdom to those items and store them back as more positive items."

I haven't been writing about the negative things from most of my high school years, but I have been bringing the memories to the surface to examine them. One of the things I realized right away is that some of the anger and hatred I felt back then was still present. These are things that happened more than 30 years ago! The negative memories are now replaced by neutral memories, not positive but not negative either. Most of the teenagers that gave me grief back then are in my age group. The ones that didn't change could be in jail or even dead by now. The ones that did change may be regretting the things they did back then. Either way, it shouldn't matter to me anymore and it doesn't.

The negativity that I dug up from my memories has been replaced by neutrality. It's not positive, but it doesn't leave the damaging footprint that negativity does. I am now prepared to write about my life during that period and should have the next installment completed in a few short days.

• The Power of Positive Thinking
• Anger and Sorrow
• My Talkative Son
• Autobiography, Part 3 (Mostly High School Years)
• New Friends